Lorenzo

Sunlight found the doctors unprepared.

Both Cedric and Edgar had passed out. Cedric loudly snored.

Edgar lay crumpled on the floor by Agnes’s bedside.

A hunched and sleeping Lorenzo sat on the edge of the small bed. Her little hand still inside his.

Suddenly, three slow, ragged knocks rattled the chapel door.

Cedric and Edgar were startled awake, while Lorenzo looked toward the door. Edgar scrambled to his feet first and ran to open it.

A bloodied and panting Ignatius almost collapsed in his arms.

”Ignatius!” Cedric rushed over to help Edgar lift him.

”What happened? Is it over?” Edgar asked. “Answer me!”

It took the knight a few excruciating, panting seconds, but he managed to rasp an answer.

”She… She…”

”It is done?” Lorenzo asked from the small bed.

“Tell us! Is it over?” Cedric asked.

Slowly, Ignatius nodded.

”She’s… prevailed.”

Lorenzo looked up.

”It’s time,” Cedric said then. “I will go fetch Abbess Elinor.”

Edgar made sure Ignatius was sitting upright on the stool when Elinor rushed over, giving the battered and bloodied knight a look of contempt when she entered.

Lorenzo was already mixing the rousing elixir and soaking cloths in vinegar. Edgar rubbed Agnes’s hands with a warm cloth, watching for any change in color. Cedric felt her pulse. It was as slow as it had ever been after last night's excitement.

Lorenzo tipped the liquid between her lips, watching closely as it gathered between them, but it was never drunk. He wiped away the drops when they fell.

“Try again,” Cedric urged.

Lorenzo nodded and obeyed. But the liquid still spilled out, and Agnes’s eyes stayed closed, her limbs slack.

”Wake up, Agnes.”

”The sun is shining, Little Sister; it’s time to open your eyes.”

Over and over they called her name.

“Look, little sister, your knight’s here. Your champion has come back!”

Still, nothing.

The doctors went back to the journal and recited all the measurements, growing more anxious as every measurement merely confirmed the last.

Abbess Elinor also approached the little nun and tried to squeeze her hand and call her name, but she, too, went ignored.

After seconds turned into minutes and minutes into an hour or so, the doctors sat, Cedric with his head between his hands.

Edgar walked towards Ignatius, who simply sat on the corner.

”Call her,” Edgar said. “Your demented forest mistress. Now.”

”I can’t… until she awakens; Duessa is not…”

“Bring her. Drag her by her leaves if you must.”

Edgar’s growl sent the stuttering knight walking out the door.

But once Ignatius was gone, they were once again alone in the darkened chapel and the still slumbering child made his threats sound hollow.

”Don’t just sit there! There has to be something we have not tried yet! Send for Alaric for God’s sake!” Edgar roared.

Cedric nodded and got ready to head out the door.

“Plague Doctor Edgar,” Elinor spoke now. “Your wrath merely conveys that you have indeed reached the limits of your science. The sisters will take over from here.”

“And what can you do?” Edgar asked bitterly.

Elinor glared at him at first, then softened her demeanor.

”You have not slept in three days. Go home,” she said.

”Abbess Elinor, I…” Lorenzo protested hoarsely.

“You as well, Lorenzo,” Elinor said. “Return this evening. I will send word if anything changes. For now, there is nothing more for you to do for her here.”

After all the doctors had gathered their instruments and herbs and left the cloister, Agnes’s little body was lifted from the narrow bed by many pale hands and, once again, closed the door of the abandoned little chapel.

✨✨✨

Once all the men left, the sisters now spread clean linen over a narrow bier before the altar of their main chapel. White flowers. And many burning candles.

Carefully, sweetly, little Agnes was laid there, now back in her full habit amidst sung prayers that sounded more like a lullaby.

The sisters then quietly withdrew behind the iron bars that marked the enclosure, taking their places on the far side.

They never stopped singing. Their voices low and unadorned, the old melody moved like a sad cradle song. It was not the office of the dead, yet every note carried the weight of farewell. The nuns stood motionless behind the bars, hands folded, half in shadow, singing over their sleeping child. Only Sister Agatha simply stood there, eyes swollen, and far too distraught to move her lips to even pretend to sing.

After two days of keeping away and tending to their patients in the village, Lorenzo, Cedric and Edgar returned to the convent. Only this time, they occupied the very last pew of the chapel, the same place Ignatius once sat. The candles cast their small, steady light that barely reached them: three ominous shadows.

What were they doing there?

They had no more elixirs.

No more powders. No more preparations.

No answers.

They just sat, hearing this melodic lament; sad, enraged, anguished, exhausted, and unable to help it. Any of it.

Once the mournful carol mercifully ended, Abbess Elinor walked to the bars as the sisters exited via their door. Only their steps made a sound.

All three doctors slowly approached the barrier near the altar.

”Why do you place her here, as if she were dead? In shrouds? Like some kind of martyred incorruptible…?” Edgar reproached with bitterness. “She’s not dead. That child is still breathing. She’s just asleep!”

”Please, Revered Mother, you need to let us try again,” said Cedric.

Abbess Elinor let out a soft sigh.

”In that, you are correct, Plague Doctor Edgar. Agnes is a child. Her little body has endured enough. Enough of aromatic infusions and mysterious antidotes.”

”We thoroughly consulted every book, every physician, every volume on Galenic anatomy we could get our hands on. Lorenzo’s books on Aristotle, Hippocrates, Avicenna’s Canon…”

But Elinor lifted a hand and interrupted Edgar’s contention.

“You have.”

”And still, you choose to entomb her…?” he insisted.

”She will not be entombed. But Little Sister Agnes will remain here,” she said, her voice soft. Final. “Until she chooses to wake up.”

“That can take months…” Cedric contended. “Years…”

“And should she choose not to?” Edgar asked.

“Then she will remain where she belongs.”

She looked once at the three men.

”You can say goodbye to her if you wish.”

The whole world darkened down to those burning candles. To a little body that had been put on display among flowers.

Lorenzo forgot how to breathe. How to stand. How to exist.

Her little face looked peaceful. The cruelty of those final words was too much.

Say goodbye.

…

How does one do that exactly?

For how long?

Lorenzo had never considered it.

All these months, his life had passed in the presence of this very moment. Every day, he faced this same darkness. He never once questioned how many minutes one should remain, just standing there, while a body cools. While a loved one falls apart.

Not once.

Now, it was all he could think of.

What was advisable?

Or customary?

Or proper?

He had to wonder about these things now because all other concerns had ceased to exist.

They had failed.

She had trusted them. With her life.

They failed.

Cedric and Edgar were still talking to the abbess. Appealing. Discussing. Negotiating. Accusing. Begging. But Lorenzo could do none of those things now. He could simply stand there.

Yes, her heart was still beating, Cedric argued.

Yes, her lungs were still moving air, Edgar stated.

None of this makes any sense whatsoever.

It is all… so very strange.

”… you’d bury her alive…!” Edgar accused, or something to that effect. Lorenzo did not urge him to measure his words. He was only catching phrases now. Fragments. Pieces.

Elinor, of course, calmly denied the accusation, but her reasoning made no difference. Only her authority mattered here.

The abbess did, however, agree to open the lock and allow the doctors to slide the heavy iron barrier. Lorenzo didn’t bother to help move it.

Duessa.

Ignatius.

Where were they?

Did they ever exist? It was almost impossible to know for sure.

There was nothing, living or dead, beyond that dreadful chapel with iron bars. Those horrid candles. The color white. How he hated the color white!

“Lorenzo? Lorenzo…?

Someone called his name. He apparently had not spoken or moved a muscle, even after the barrier had been opened.

He looked at them, without really seeing anyone. Edgar searched his own cloak. Cedric also shuffled around for another tincture. Another remedy.

Yet, only Lorenzo kept his gaze fixed on the hands resting delicately on her stomach.

Which is why it was Lorenzo the first one to see it happen.

Slight.

Barely perceptible.

That one little twitch of her pinky finger.

That is why Lorenzo almost doubted himself.

But sure enough, the little eyelids fluttered once. And then, they slowly opened.

“Agnes!” Lorenzo ran to her in haste, almost falling. “AGNES!”

His voice immediately alerted the others, who ceased all discussion and focused on the stirring girl right beside their conversation.

Her eyes squeezed shut again as she began to choke and cough.

”Oh, my sweet! Dear sweet child!” Cedric cried out as Agnes continued to spasm.

Edgar fell to his knees, his face between his hands.

Feeling outside his own body, Lorenzo wrapped his arms around the child and helped her sit up. He thrust out his own gloved hand beneath her mouth, expecting vomit.

Yet, immediately after the spasm, Agnes spat out something small and hard into the palm of his hand.

Her tooth.

In a daze, she looked up at all four of them.

”Did I miss supper?”

But the confused girl was immediately swallowed by the heavy, leathery, tearful embrace of three very happy and weeping plague doctors, and one joyful abbess who sighed with relief, despite the little nun’s muffled shouts.

“Aack! You are all crushing me!”

The bells in the convent began to toll wildly. Dozens of running steps were heard around the cloister walks and the courtyard, as word quickly spread, sending the sisters racing and calling out to each other with joy.

“She’s awake! Little sister Agnes has come back to us!”

The tolling carried as far as Alaric’s apothecary in town. And farther still, into the woods, where Ignatius sat alone.